Telemedicine is designed to provide medical diagnosis and treatment to patients remotely. Telemedicine also provides patients with access to healthcare in restricted areas and difficult to access areas, and to rural communities. Telemedicine also reduces cost and resource consumption for providing healthcare. In telemedicine applications, medical information is collected from medical devices and transferred through a media communication network to a remote location for the purpose of remote consultations, medical examinations, medical procedures, etc. Situations where a medical examination of a distant patient is required comprise, for example, when healthcare facility access to a patient is restricted due to multiple reasons such as remote location, military environment, home patients, etc., emergency situations where time restriction calls for immediate diagnostic examination of the patient, situations when a patient cannot be frequently mobilized to a hospital and requires regular checkups, etc. It is difficult to carry and move bulky or heavy diagnostic equipment to remote locations or into emergency situation environments. Anatomical examination in these situations is therefore difficult unless the patient is rushed to the nearest hospital with the required facilities and equipment.
Major concerns while performing virtual diagnostic examination are safety, efficiency, and cost effectiveness. For example, conventional virtual diagnostic systems typically need to be compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability act (HIPAA) standards. Efficiency and cost effectiveness, however, are not as clearly defined and depend significantly on a diagnostician's requirements. For a medical device such as a stethoscope or a dermatoscope, the effectiveness of the medical device depends not only on the efficiency of the medical device in recording diagnostic data, but also on the ability of the medical device to provide useful information in a timely, usable, and appropriate manner. Medical devices with a poor user interface or inadequate controls are unlikely to be used for telemedicine applications when the information requirements are time critical. Moreover, conventional medical devices that are used in telemedicine applications communicate data using universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 communication standards that use substantially low speed data communication, for example, at a speed of about 480 megabits per second (Mbit/s). Even a telemedicine device compatible with a high quality image processing technology or a video digital signal processing technology is not sufficient for processing high quality image data using USB 2.0 communication standards. Conventional telemedicine devices typically use outdated technology that is now superseded by updated technology that allows faster data transmission. Conventional telemedicine devices are not equipped with the updated technology that allows clarity and significantly fast communication of diagnostic data collected using the telemedicine devices.
Conventional telemedicine techniques also lack interactivity between patients and healthcare providers. Moreover, in conventional diagnostic examination procedures, observations are subjectively recorded from an examining doctor's perspective. The examining doctor records the observations and stores the recorded observations digitally or in a written form. However, if the doctor's observations are incorrect, the patient has to undergo examination again by another physician. A doctor typically creates transcripts for a large number of patient records in a day that can wear out the doctor. In such situations, the doctor may end up recording incorrect observation data. In such cases patient records are not reliable. Hence, there is a need for a computer implemented system that records and stores diagnostic data in real time, for example, in an audio file format, a video file format, an image file format, etc., instead of relying on subjective observations of one doctor, thereby allowing another doctor to perform accurate medical evaluations and examinations using the recorded diagnostic data.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a multipurpose diagnostic examination apparatus that facilitates medical imaging and remote diagnostic examination of a patient in real time via a communication network, while ensuring clarity of diagnostic data recorded by medical diagnostic devices, and providing diagnostic data in a timely, usable, and appropriate format for accurate remote medical diagnosis. Moreover, there is a need for a method and system that facilitates medical imaging and remote diagnostic examinations using the multipurpose diagnostic examination apparatus implemented with an updated data communication standard, thereby ensuring safety, efficiency, and cost effectiveness of medical diagnostic examinations.